All Contents Copyright 2004-2007 Ellen Komp
MICHAEL
BLOOMBERG
Mayor, New York City
Bloomberg became the subject
of an advertising campaign
by NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) when he
told a journalist who asked if he had smoked marijuana, "You bet I did.
And I enjoyed it." Sadly, Bloomberg's policies since he took office are
not sympathetic to his earlier activities. The response to the NORML campaign
seems to have been to crack down on NYC paraphernalia shops.
BILL
BRADLEY
Athlete/Politician
He was captain of the 1964 U.S. Olympic basketball team and a three-time All-American
at Princeton. He delayed his professional basketball career to spend two years
at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. Upon his return he joined the
New York Knicks and played on their 1970 and 1973 championship teams. In 1978
he was elected to the U.S. Senate and served three terms.
During his run for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, he admitted to smoking pot on a pundit show, prompting Sam Donaldson to out himself also, Cokie Roberts to play the pregnancy card, and George Will to say he was instead a member of the Falstaff generation. While running against Bradley for the presidential nomination, admitted pot smoker Al Gore supported medical marijuana; while running against Bush he backed off.
WILLIAM
F. BUCKLEY JR.
Political Commentator
Longtime conservative commentator Buckley has written extensively about the failure of the war on drugs in his journal the National Review. He has admitted to trying marijuana, without effect, while beyond the three-mile territorial limit at sea, where US law is not in effect. Buckley's son Christopher admits to pot smoking at Yale in his delightful book Wry Martinis. Also don't miss his Thank You for Smoking, a hilarious fictional account featuring the cigarette, gun and liquor lobbies.
In an interviewed that aired October 16, 2005 on "Dateline NBC," singer Melissa Etheridge said she smoked medicinal marijuana to help with the side effects of chemotherapy during her treatment for breast cancer. "Instead of taking five or six of the prescriptions, I decided to go a natural route and smoke marijuana," Etheridge said. She said she smoked marijuana every day for her pain and symptoms and "the minute I didn't feel it, I stopped." (This is why smoking is such an effective way to ingest marijuana, rather than taking it orally.) When asked how her doctors reacted, Etheridge said, "Every single one was, 'Oh, yeah. That's the best help for the effects of chemotherapy.'"
The 44-year-old singer, who was diagnosed over a year ago, is now cancer-free. She recently released a new greatest hits album, "The Road Less Traveled," including the new song "I Run for Life," which is dedicated to the fight against breast cancer. During the Janis Joplin tribute on last year's Grammy awards broadcast, younger singer Josh Stone seemed to be doing a passable job until Melissa opened her mouth and wailed like no other living woman singer can. Keep on beltin' them out, Melissa, and keep on keeping it real.
WALKER EVANS
Photographer
Walker Evans was an important
contributor to the development of American documentary photography in the 1930s.
His precisely detailed, frontal depictions of people and artifacts of American
life have influenced each succeeding generation of photographers.
During his lifetime Evans was the recipient of many awards. He was a Guggenheim
Fellow in 1940 and received an honorary degree from Williams College in 1968.
His photographs were exhibited all over the world, including several major shows
at the Museum of Modern Art.
Walker Evans at the age of 68 had "conspicuous tastes in pornography and
marijuana," according to a review by Henry Allen of the Walker Evans exhibit
at the New York Metropolitan Museum and a book, Unclassified: A Walker Evans
Anthology by Jeff Rosenheim and Douglas Eklund. Allen's review was published
in the New York Review of Books, March 23, 2000, p. 10.
Richard P. Feynman was a Nobel laureate in physics, a best-selling author and member of the presidential commission that investigated the Challenger disaster. He was a popular lecturer who was widely known for his insatiable curiosity, gentle wit, brilliant mind and playful temperament. His 1985 book, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman," was on the New York Times best-seller list for 14 weeks.
Feynman shared the Nobel Prize in 1965 for reconstructing almost the whole of quantum mechanics and electrodynamics, deriving a way to analyze atomic interactions through simple diagrams, a method that is still used widely. He was also a member of the team that developed the first atomic bomb at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. His 1988 obituary in the Los Angeles Times stated that Feynman admitted to smoking pot during his lifetime.
On February 4, 2004 singer Art Garfunkel, part of the folk music duo Simon and Garfunkel, pleaded guilty to marijuana possession. Police had pulled over his limousine for speeding in upstate New York on January 17 and Garfunkel, 62, was caught with a small amount of marijuana in his jacket pocket.. He paid a $100 fine. He was arrested for the same offense a short time thereafter. While the INS was attempting to deport John Lennon, ostensibly over an old marijuana bust in England, Garfunkel said, "If John Lennon is deported, I'm leaving too... with my musicians... and my marijuana."
Art Garfunkel Charged With Having Marijuana, New York Newsday, 1/22/04
Congressman Newt Gingrich co-introduced legislation to allow marijuana's use as a medicine at the Federal level on September 16, 1981. On March 19, 1982 he wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source. …Federal policies do not reflect a factual or balanced assessment of marijuana's use as a medicant."
Gingrich admitted that he smoked marijuana when he was in college. He stated in 1995 article from The Economist, "That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era." One year later he attacked Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry for making the same admission, and charged without substantiation that one quarter of the White House staff used drugs. "See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality," Gingrich said. "That's why you get to go to jail and I don't. Any questions?" Yeah, how can you be such a hypocrite?
Source: Hilary Stout, Wall Street
Journal; 8/8/96
GARY HALL
Olympic Medalist Swimmer
American Swimmer Gary Hall Jr. overcame diabetes to win four medals in the 2000
Olympic games in Sydney, Australia. He anchored the US 4x100 medley relay to
victory in world record time and also won a gold in the 50 freestyle relay,
plus a silver
medal in the 4x100 freestyle relay and a bronze in the 100 meter freestyle.
Hall nearly missed the Games
after refusing to pay a fine for marijuana use. He appealed against a three-month
suspension imposed in 1998 by world swimming's governing body FINA after he
tested positive for marijuana. FINA considered it was a second offence but Hall
maintained it should have been considered a first infraction since the first
time he tested positive -- at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics -- marijuana was not
on the list of prohibited substances. Hall refused to pay the fine, saying:
``If that means I won't compete in Sydney, then so be it. It's a matter of principle.''
However, the US swimming federation decided to pay the fine on condition that
Hall agree to conduct several swimming clinics for American youngsters without
pay, which the swimmer accepted.
Source: Phil Whitten, Four Olympic medals for pot smoker, Reuters 09-23-00
In a 2001 interview with My Generation, actor Ed Harris said marijuana led him to acting. In high school, Harris was a football captain and wanted to turn professional. "And then I go to Columbia," said Harris, "and there's, you know, SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] and marijuana and I didn't do anything like that in high school. You start experimenting, you start thinking about things a little bit differently and you realize you've got to do something else with your life. I stopped playing ball. I'd seen some summer theater in Oklahoma, and I thought maybe I could do that." Harris won an Oscar for his portrayal of painter Jackson Pollock.
Source: Cannabis Canada.
In a story that made a big
Splash in February 2005, actress Daryl Hannah urged politicians to legalize
marijuana and magic mushrooms - because those drugs open people's minds. Hannah,
44, reportedly told High Times magazine,
"I'm afraid of chemical-based drugs. But the ones derived directly from
nature concern me less. Things like mushrooms, peyote, marijuana, shouldn't
be illegal. You don't want people to operate heavy machinery while they're on
those things, but I have no problem with their use."
She continued, "It's ridiculous that something can be illegal when it can be so useful for opening minds. Hallucinogens open all of your senses. They can actually be quite educational and result in epiphanies."
JOHN HAY
Former Secretary of State
John Hay served as Secretary of State from 1898-1905, during the terms of presidents McKinley and Roosevelt. In that position he supported the "open door" policy in China and is credited with preventing the dissolution of the Chinese empire in 1900. He also secured by treaty the right for the US to construct and defend the Panama canal and obtained a settlement of the Alaska-Canada border controversy. Hay was private secretary to President Abraham Lincoln from 1861-1865 and ambassador to Great Britain from 1897-1898. He was also a journalist with the New York Tribune from 1870-1875, a successful writer of verse and fiction, and co-author with John G. Nicolay of Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 vol, 1890).
Hay was influenced by Fitz Hugh Ludlow's book Hasheesh Eater, and wrote that while a student at Brown University, "I used to eat hasheesh and dream dreams."
SOURCE: Donald Dulchinos, "Pioneer
of Inner Space: The Life of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Hasheesh Eater' (Autonomedia,
Brooklyn 1998), p. 87
MYTH: Pot Smokers Don't Contribute to Society
DAVID HOCKNEY
Painter and collage artist; hangs in every major art museum in the world
British-born, California-residing artist David Hockey took the occasion of his exhibit at London's Royal Academy of Arts in the summer of 1999 to call for the legalization of marijuana. "I remember Jack Straw [UK's home minister] in 1968 saying 'you can't legalise marijuana as we haven't got enough information'. Thirty years later, he's said exactly the same thing. I don't know what life has taught him, I've learnt quite a lot. I've smoked a lot of marijuana. It hasn't harmed me."
Hockney said he smoked a regular "joint" with a glass of whisky in the evening. But, he hastened to add, he had never indulged in stimulants when working because "drugs and art don't mix…You have to be very clear-headed," he said. Drugs made you "too pleased with everything", and to create great work "you have to struggle".
Source: Dalya Alberge, HOCKNEY
SAYS DRUGS ARE FINE BUT NOT FOR ART, The Times (UK), May 27, 1999
Shown: Pearblossom
Highway (1986) photocollage by David Hockney.
CHRISSIE
HYNDE
Musician/Activist
Since the late '70s, singer/guitarist/songwriter Chrissie Hynde has been the leader of one of rock's most widely beloved bands, the Pretenders. Born on September 7, 1951 in Akron, OH, Hynde bought a one way ticket to London, England, where she became a rock critic before founding her band. Hynde has never been afraid to voice her opinions concerning causes she believes strongly about, such as ending animal cruelty.
In October 1997 Hynde appeared on the cover of High Times, speaking on behalf of marijuana legalization. In November of that year, during a California concert held on National Medical Marijuana Day, she and drummer Martin Chambers wore green ribbons onstage and Hynde stopped the show to announce that it was because, "we do endorse the use of the herb for medical and other reasons. And I can tell you at 46 that marijuana is the key to longevity." Hynde now reports she no longer smokes and "feels fantastic." But her song, "Legalize Me" remains an anthem for marijuana farmers everywhere.
Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh's "intellectual, articulate and reflective" book, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (2005, Little, Brown) includes Lesh's description of the band's "forays into mind-altering substances" at a time when LSD was still legal and the Dead provided the soundtrack to those revivals of the ancient Elusinian mysteries, dubbed by Joseph Campbell as Dionysian festivals, the Acid Tests.
"For me and my friends, these drugs (pot, acid, the other "ethogens [sic? entheogens?] were seen as tools -- tools to enhance awareness, to expand our horizons, to access other levels of mind, to manifest the numinous and sacred, tools that had been used for thousands of years by shamans, by oracles, in the ancient mystery schools, by all whose mission was to penetrate beyond the veil of illusion . . . These experiences were not embarked upon as escape from 'reality' -- they were explorations into the superreal." After a funny anecdote in which drummer Mickey Hart had to reacquaint Lesh with his bass before a show where too many people had spiked the backstage apple juice with acid, the book details how Keith and Donna Godchaux and other late-comers to the band abused drugs and paid the price; also Jerry Garcia's decent into heroin, and Lesh's own alcoholism and cocaine abuse, both of which he regrets.
At 65, Lesh is still going strong, and his Phil Lesh and Friends recent Mardi Gras gig in San Francisco showed how much of the Grateful Dead's magical mix owed to Lesh's bass.
Jack London fought his way up out of the factories and waterfront dives of West Oakland, California to become the highest paid, most popular novelist and short story writer of his day. Between 1900 and 1916 he completed over fifty books, hundreds of short stories, and numerous articles on a wide range of topics. He traveled to Alaska to write his most famous book, Call of the Wild (1903).
London wrote of a hashish-filled evening, "last night was like a thousand years. I was obsessed with indescribable sensations, alternative visions of excessive happiness and oppressive moods of extreme sorrow. I wandered for aeons through countless worlds, mingling with all types of humanity, from the most saintly persons down to the lowest type of abysmal brute."
COURTNEY
LOVE
Musician/Actress
On January 28, 2004 Courtney Love and crew at Kansas City's 965thebuzz.com interviewed Very Important Potheads, demanding to know why she wasn't represented on the site. "I'm Courtney Love, damnit!" was the compelling reason she gave, and since her buddy Scoops obliged us by sending a picture, here she is. Love not only founded the breakthrough band Hole, she co-starred in Sid & Nancy and The Trial of Larry Flint with Woody Harrelson (who had to go to bat for Love when producers considered her too risky for the project. Harrelson argued the movie wouldn't be the same without her, and we agree.)
Love was recently detained for supposed prescription drug abuse and several observers noted that Rush Limbaugh got off easier than Love. She confirmed on the air what was revealed in the Kurt Cobain diaries published in Rolling Stone after his death: that he twice went back to using heroin to quell the severe stomach pain he suffered from. Love said, "Yes that was true and I used to say, Kurt let's just smoke instead." Apparently Cobain was one of the millions of Americans undermedicated for pain and he turned to street drugs instead. If he were alive today he'd probably be in rehab with Limbaugh.
The first Jamaican musical superstar, Bob Marley emerged from poverty to help develop and introduce the world to Reggae music. His group The Wailers became the most popular reggae band in the world and Rolling Stone magazine named them band of the year in 1976.
Marley spoke freely about his sacramental use of cannabis throughout his life, and was often photographed smoking spliffs. He went to jail for marijuana, as did all three founding members of the Wailers. "You mean they can tell God that it's not legal?" he once asked a Canadian journalist. One of Marley's greatest hits, "I Shot the Sheriff", describes the fate of a marijuana grower hunted by a fanatical law enforcement officer:
Sheriff John Brown always hate
I,
for what, I don’t know.
Everytime I plant a seed,
he said, kill it before it grow.
He said, kill them before they grow.
Marley died in 1981 from cancer, which started on his foot and was first noticed when a football (soccer) injury refused to heal. At his final concert in Pittsburgh, he sang Redemption Song: "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind..."
MYTH: Scientists Say Pot Should Be Illegal
MARGARET MEAD
Anthropologist and author
When Margaret Mead died in 1978, she was the most famous anthropologist
in the world. Indeed, it was through her work that many people learned about
anthropology and its holistic vision of the human species. Mead taught at a
number of institutions, authored some twenty books and co-authored an equal
number. She was much honored in her lifetime, serving as president of major
scientific associations, including the American Anthropological Association
and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she received
28 honorary doctorates. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom following
her death in 1978.
Mead testified before Congress in favor of the legalization of marijuana on October 27, 1969, and she told Newsweek in 1970 that she had tried it once herself.
Source: Library of Congress, Margaret Mead Collection
A member of the most successful rock-n-roll groups of all time, Paul McCartney helped pay for a July 24, 1967 advertisement in the London Times that called for legalization of pot possession, release of all prisoners on possession charges and government research into marijuana's medical uses. "I think we could decrimalize marijuana, and I'd like to see a really unbised medical report on it," he said after being deported from Japan for bringing nearly half a pound of marijuana into Tokyo for a Band on the Run concert tour in 1980. John Lennon told a Paris newspaper that their band smoked pot at Buckingham Palace before being decorated by the queen in 1965.
Frances McDormand was nominated for an Oscar for her work in Mississippi Burning and won the Best Actress Academy Award in 1996 for portraying an 8-month-pregnant sheriff who captures a brutal killer in Fargo (1996). In May 2003, McDormand appeared on the cover of High Times magazine holding a joint. "I'm a recreational pot-smoker," she said, revealing she first smoked marijuana as a 17-year-old freshman at Bethany College in West Virginia in 1975. She said, "there has never been enough of a distinction between marijuana and other drugs·.It's a human rights issue, a censorship issue, and a choice issue."
SOURCE: Steve Bloom, Lady of the Canyon, High Times 5/03
M. SCOTT PECK
Psychologist/Author
Pop psychologist
M. Scott Peck, author of "The Road Less Travelled," died on September
25, 2005 at the age of 69. According to his obituary the Times Online (UK),
Peck made the self-help manual a mainstream bestseller with his book, which
sold 10 million copies, a record for a non-fiction title. The paperback edition
stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for eight years.
After graduating
from medical school, Scott Peck joined the Army to get medical training, and
stayed there for nine years. He became a vocal opponent of America's involvement
in Vietnam, but remained in the army as a psychiatrist and reached the rank
of lieutenant-colonel. Enraged by the My Lai massacre of March 1968, he tried
unsuccessfully to secure support for an investigation into earlier military
atrocities. The Jewish-born Peck flirted with Buddhism before settling on Christianity
as his preferred path.
Peck stated that "most of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree." Interviewed in May 2005, he told The Times Online: "A fellow who was thinking of doing my biography once asked me: 'God, have you ever denied yourself anything?' And I said: 'Well, I've never smoked or drunk as much as I would like to'."
MYTH:
Drug Tests Detect Incompetence
ROSS REBAGLIATI
Olympic Gold Medalist Snowboarder 1998
Canadia Ross Rebagliati won the first-ever Olympic gold medal in Snowboarding in 1998, but was almost stripped of his medal after testing positive for marijuana after the race. Rebagliati admitted that he had smoked marijuana in the past, but said the positive test was the result of accidently inhaing nearby marijuana smoke at a going away party in his hometown of Whistler, BC. The Olympic committee allowed Rebagliati to keep his medal.
Source: Mike Downey, Rebagliati Gets to Keep Gold Medal, Los Angeles Times, 2/13/98
Considered the greatest Mexican painter of the twentieth century, Diego Rivera is credited with the reintroduction of fresco painting into modern art and architecture. He painted major murals in at the San Francisco Stock Exchange, California School of Fine Arts, Detroit Institute of Art, providing the first inspiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt‚s WPA program.
The Book of Grass contains an account by the actor Errol Flynn telling how Rivera asked him whether he had ever heard music come from a painting. Then the artist proffered Flynn a marijuana cigarette, explaining, "After smoking this you will see a painting and you will hear it as well." Flynn tried it and had a fascinating experience, in which he heard the paintings "singing."
ARNOLD
SCHWARZENEGGER
Actor and Politician
California’s new governor and former Mr. Universe encouraged the director of Pumping Iron, the documentary that launched him in Hollywood 25 years ago, to re-release it unedited — including a scene where he takes a drag off a joint. He said: “I would refuse to wipe out that record or alter it because of image's sake. That would not be true to the filmmaker.”
“I did smoke a joint and I did inhale, he said, taking a jab at President Clinton's famous statement. That's what it was in the '70s, that's what I did. I have never touched it since….As you grow up and as you become more mature, those things change. The only one that's perfect is God.”
SOURCE: Lynn Elber, Schwarzenegger Backs 'Pumping Iron' , 11/14/02, AP.
POSSIBLE
POTHEAD
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Playwright and poet
Clay pipe fragments excavated from Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon home contain small amounts of cocaine and myristic acid - a hallucinogenic derived from plants, including nutmeg. The pipes, which were examined with the help of Inspector Tommie van der Merwe of the South African Police Service's Forensic Science Laboratory, also show hints of residues of cannabis. The findings were published in the South African Journal of Science.
Source: E. Stoddard, Pipes show cocaine smoked in Shakespeare's England, Reuters, March 1, 2001.
Evidence of cannabis use by Shakespeare is also found in Sonnet #76, the "noted weed" sonnet:
Why is my verse so barren
of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
DONNA
SHALALA
Former Secretary Health and Human Services
Former US Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala admitted to smoking pot in college in an interview with Diane Sawyer. Later, she stood with Attorney General Janet Reno and Drug "Czar" Barry McCaffrey threatening to revoke doctors' licences for recommending medical marijuana (a successful civil challenge later backed the government off.) "Marijuana is illegal, dangerous, unhealthy and wrong," Shalala said. "It's a one-way ticket to dead-end hopes and dreams."
Pot smoking didn't seem to have hurt Shalala's ambition. After she served as president of Hunter College in New York City and in 1988, she was named chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the first woman ever to head a Big Ten school. Shalala also chaired the Children's Defense Fund before being appointed by Bill Clinton to the top H&HS post. She is now the President of the University of Miami, which is the most prestigious university in the state of Florida and also a world renown institute for scientific and medical research.
Commenting about Shalala's
indefensible stance against medical marijuana, former Surgeon General Jocelyn
Elders told Playboy magazine, "She has a Ph.D. in political science. That's
the kind of science she practices."
SARAH
SILVERMAN
Comedienne
Sarah Silverman was named
"Outie" of the Month on December 1, 2005, her 35th birthday, while
she was getting rave reviews for her new movie, "Jesus is Magic".
Rolling Stone reports that Silverman is a Very Important Pothead. "It's
down to, like, four nights a week," she told RS. "After I perform,
I have to have it. I used to like all that stuff, mushrooms, acid. I think I
was high from nineteen to twenty-one years old. It was the best time. I remember
the first time I tripped, in Washington Square Park [in New York}....We went
to a café and got hot chocolated with all these homeless people who we
had made friends with. Finally we got back to my apartment which was painted
dark purple to match my bong....God! We were so free."
After a performance at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in L.A., Rolling Stone reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis writes, "Silverman steps into the greenroom and grabs her backpack. She takes out a joint. 'Look what we have here,' she says, and settles on a stool in the corner, contentedly puffing away."
ROBERT
SMITH
Athlete/Author/Broadcaster
AARON
SORKIN
Television and Film Writer and Producer
Aaron Sorkin, the Emmy Award-winning creator of the hit NBC television series "West Wing," pleaded guilty to three drug possession charges and entered a two-year diversion program after he was arrested at the Burbank Airport in April 2001 when authorities found hallucinogenic mushrooms and small amounts of rock cocaine and marijuana in his luggage.
In 1989 Sorkin received the prestigious Outer Critics Circle award as Outstanding American Playwright for the stage version of "A Few Good Men, " later nominated for a Golden Globe. Sorkin has gone on to write for many movies and TV shows, including "The American President", "Malice", as well as cooperating on "Enemy of the State", "The Rock" and "Excess Baggage". In addition he was invited by Steven Spielberg to "polish" the script of "Schindler's List". Sorkin's TV credits include Golden Globe nominated "West Wing" and "Sports Night".
SOURCE: 'WEST WING'S' SORKIN GUILTY OF DRUG CHARGES, Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2001
JOHN
TRUDELL
Activist/Musician
Born of mixed tribal blood, John Trudell grew up in and around the Santee Sioux reservation near his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska and served in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam from 1963-1967. In 1969, Trudell participated in the occupation of Alcatraz Island by Indians of All Tribes, becoming a spokesman for the group. After the occupation ended in 1971, Trudell worked with the American Indian Movement, becoming national Chairman of AIM in 1973 until 1979. In February of 1979, Trudell's wife and three children were killed in a fire of unknown origin hours after he had set fire to a U.S. flag in Washington, DC. In 1982, with Jackson Browne's help, Trudell launched a career as a recording artist that continues to this day.
In
November 2005, Trudell was inducted into the High Times Counterculture Hall
of Fame at the 18th Cannabis Cup Awards Show in Amsterdam. Trudell is the first
Native American to receive the honor. In his acceptance speech, Trudell said,
"Cannabis is an integral part of the web of life, and how we connect
to it and how we use it can be very strengthening to the overall meaning and
overall purpose of life. It truly is a medicine and it's a medicine for us so
that we can be a medicine to the earth."
"I don't smoke marijuana to escape," he said. "It helps me to think about things other than my fears, to see more clearly and think things out." "My DNA needs THC," Trudell chants in his song "Grassfire" from his disk "Blue Indians" (1999).
MYTH: Marijuana Isn't Medicine
QUEEN
VICTORIA
Reigned Great Britain from 1837-1901
Sir John Russell Reynolds served a thirty-seven year tenure as Queen Victoria's personal physician. During his extensive services, Reynolds found cannabis useful for treating menstrual cramps, dysmenorrhea, migraine, neuralgia, epileptic convulsions, and senile insomnia. He wrote a scientific review of cannabis in 1890 that noted, "When pure and administered carefully, it is one of the most valuable medicines we possess." (J.R. Reynolds, "On the Therapeutical Uses and Toxic Effects of Cannabis Indica," Lancet 1 (1890): 637-38.)
Source: C. Conrad, Hemp for Health, 1997, Healing Arts Press (Rochester, VT)
MYTH:
Hemp is Marijuana
PANCHO
VILLA (POSSIBLE POTHEAD)
Mexican Revolutionary General
To many, Pancho Villa is
revered as a hero who pushed foreign "proprietors" out of Mexico and
fought for the common man. He was a fierce general who also helped those in
need and rescued orphans. Villa's troops were said to smoke marijuana, a term
they used for the flowering tops of the hemp plant (pos-sibly named for a juana
(female soldier) in Villa's army.) The folk song "La Cucaracha" tells
of a cockroach who cannot function because he lacks marijuana to smoke.
During the Spanish American War, Villa's troops seized 800,000 acres of prime timberland from newspaperman William Randolph Hearst. Hearst soon began a smear campaign against marijuana, claiming its dark-skinned users turned murderous. The campaign was useful in racist attempts to deny Mexican laborers work in the U.S. Americans didn't realize the scary-sounding drug marijuana was in fact their old friend Cannabis hemp. Hemp is perhaps the most useful natural resource on the planet, a source of paper, fiber, fuel, food, and medicine, which continues to be denied to mankind due to ignorance and fear.
Source: J. Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes
POSSIBLE
POTHEAD
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Father of Our Country
Washington's diary reports that he
separated males from females in his hemp garden, "rather too late."
Much speculation has ensued about whether or not Washington's reason for sexing
his plants was to make a more smokable product. One thing is for sure: hemp
was grown in the US colonies as far back as Jamestown, with several colonies
ordering their farmers to grow it. Thomas Paines's pamphlet Common Sense lists
hemp as the first requirement for revolution, writing that in the colonies "hemp
flourishes almost to rankness." Thomas Jefferson also grew hemp on his
plantation and went to great lengths to smuggle hemp seeds out of China. Jared
Eliot wrote, "I am informed by my worthy friend Benjamin Franklin, Esq.,
of Philadelphia, that they raise hemp upon their drained lands.
SOURCE: C. Conrad, Hemp: Lifeline to the Future, p. 25.
MONTEL
WILLIAMS
Talk
Show Host
Talk show host and former Navy intelligence officer Montel Williams devotes a full chapter to medical marijuana in his new autobiography, "Climbing Higher" (New American Library). Williams, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, uses marijuana for medicinal purposes. When interviewed after marijuana was found in his bag at a Detroit airport in November 2003, Williams made no apologies. "I think it's time for a change," he said. "I hope to inspire others to take a stand." Williams said he uses marijuana to ease pain and depression, in lieu of pharmaceutical drugs. "Oxycontin and Vicodin are extremely addictive. Percocet didn't work. Marijuana is the best tool for me," he said.
Source: Montel Williams Goes to Pot, Herald-Sun (Australia), 1/7/2004
All Contents Copyright 2004-06 Ellen Komp